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Embiggening enabled. Size Matters.

Back from the repair shop and on its way to Seward, where Happy Wife eagerly awaited my arrival.

She says, “Just look at it. Paddling that is going to be better than Sex!”

“With Whom?”

“It’s a one person boat. Just me of course.”

“I mean the Sex.”

Har har har.

I’ll say this, that kayak has fetched quite a few Whoot Whoos. It’s really a beautiful boat, and super well made. I’m excited for her to get it in the water. She loves kayaking. And now she has her very own custom made boat to do it in.

As I write she and friends are out at Bear Glacier. Two overnights on the beach for her, three for some of the others. They took a water taxi from Seward. Rain and mid-40s tonight, unfortunately, but tomorrow looks to be nicer, maybe. It’s always cooler near the water this time of year. Opposite in the winter. For some perspective on that: On my way down from Anchorage yesterday, about 40 miles north of here at Summit Lake, it was 72 degrees.

I hope at least they’re able to get a fire going and set up camp out of any wind that might be coming off that glacier. Although from my perch here at our Nest it appears pretty calm on the bay. That’s right, I stayed back, inside, dry, nothing on but my comfs , snuggled into the couch near a cozy wood stove fire with a glass of Shiraz and (presently) Sarah McLachlan to keep me company.

“Wuss.”

Maybe, but I’ve had my share of nights spent on a tent floor in the wilds of Alaska, the weather beatin’ at the rain fly. Then again, if you want to experience bobbing chunks of glacier ice in a turquoise lake surrounded by snow capped peaks, this is what you have to do. At least up here it is. Nevertheless, I’ll be thinking about them tonight, way out there in the bay, must be a good hour or more to get there by water taxi, quietly envious of what they’re going to do and see tomorrow.

Moose Lasagna at our Nest this weekend. Prepared with deliriously good Ricotta cheese and served with a passable Zinfandel. Look, if you want a bottle of wine in Seward you go to the Safeway or the “Liquor Sales” room at Tony’s bar. Kay?

 

Then again, where else can you stroll the beach at 9pm with a glass of wine, the sun still shining, and not see a soul.

Green season is here. The trees in the backyard wintered well. Save one young tree, a Siberian Larch, which looks like it’s on chemotherapy.

Happy Wife’s kayak arrived a couple weeks ago. It’s a stunning boat, all 18.1 feet of it, stem to stern. Custom paint job and everything. Made in Vancouver, BC.

It arrived damaged.

This, despite being enclosed in multiple layers of heavy plastic and cardboard — the kind I suppose NASA uses — reinforced with splines of 2×2 blue board, stem to stern, and liberally labeled with cautions: High Claim Value — Top Load Only. I can well imagine the morning meetings at the warehouse at the shipping companies, the backslapping and wink-winks, “Oh yeah, sure, thanks for letting us know dare, we’ll be sure to take extra care when handling ur package dare…ha ha ha.”

It wasn’t severe damage, a half dollar size crack to the gel coat near the rear hatch, and a pretty good gouge to the hull. Happy Wife was tremendously disappointed. This is her dreamboat. And who wouldn’t be. We paid $700 just for shipping. And now, before it even sees water for the first time it needs repair. We filed a claim with the shipping company to recover the cost. Something I also expect will be met with hearty guffaws. That, or the expected finger pointing will ensue. There were three different companies involved in getting it from Vancouver to Tacoma to Anchorage. You can imagine there will be a lot of, “Hey, don’t blame us, didn’t happen on our watch.” On the other hand, maybe they’ll own up to it, like Keeebler did when I complained that the box of crackers I purchased at the grocery store was mostly schnibbles.

Doubt it. But you gotta try.

Happy Wife overcame the setback and has started planning for her multi-day kayak trip to Bear Glacier. She said, “I need to see if my wet suit still fits. Haven’t worn it in years.”  Uh oh. She disappears upstairs. Husband braces himself.

Minutes later, hot dang if she can’t still rock a wet suit

The pearls I thought were a nice touch.

Even Chuck Woolery seemed impressed. I’d no idea he was still with us. The last I recall he was asking a contestant, “Where will your husband say is the last place you made Whoopie?”

Saturday night we went to a friend’s house for Halibut fettuccine. And chocolate covered strawberries for dessert, shipped overnight FedEx from San Diego by her daughter for Mother’s Day. Shari’s Berries.

Consequently, today, Happy Wife and I went out for twenty miles or so on our bikes, tootling about town unloading calories.

A fine weekend overall.

Coffee on the porch at Our Nest this morning, overlooking Resurrection Bay. Embiggening enabled.

Later, during our walk, activity on the beach.

Back at The Nest, a snack (Homemade chicken salad, Pears, Avocado, Green grapes, English cucumbers, Cheddar cheese, and Barolo salami)

Went for a bike ride with the ladies today. Brisk, but well played by all. A few pictures for you, which may be embiggened with a single click.

My ear worm from the ride (had the Bluetooth headphones on for nearly all 30 miles): Mr. Petty, King’s Highway. Enjoy.

 

Sally leads Happy Wife ’round the bend.

Otis (Oh-Tee) selfie.

Token Buddha moment.

I complained on Keebler’s web site that a box of crackers I had purchased was mostly schnibbles. A company spokesperson replied to thank me for sharing my concern about product quality, and said I should expect a coupon in the mail redeemable for ONE box of a Keebler product of my choice. Sure enough the coupon arrived Friday. What is a parvenu to do? Should I redeem it for another box of Town House Italian Herb schnibbles crackers, or maybe a tube of Pringles? Possibly a box of Cheese-Its (Happy Wife’s Achilles Heel)? I just now Googled: Tips For Handling Sudden Wealth.

Speaking of sudden wealth — you may recall that each year in Alaska since 1916 a contest is held to see who can guess the correct day/hour/minute when the ice will go out on the Tanana River. $2.50/guess. Last year I came within four days. Big whoop, right. Well, this year, Happy Wife ran her super secret Bayesian Inverse Factor Analysis algorithm (in Unsupervised mode) to make her guesses (8). 12 minutes! That’s right, the ice officially broke up on April 24th at 2:25 pm (AKST). One of eight of Happy Wife’s guesses: April 24th, 2:37 pm (AKST). This year’s jackpot is $330,330. That’s a lot of Keebler crackers, but I doubt we’ll be notified we won, or even that we’ll be sharing the pot with other close guessers, which is commonly what happens. (Happy Wife over my shoulder just now: “Who’s this We, Kemosabe?” I reply, “Why, dear, surely if your ticket won you would…” Husband is met by Steely gaze.).

At $2.50 a crack, assuming all proceeds go to the jackpot (doubtful given the costs of running the contest), that’s ~132 thousand tickets purchased. Surely one or more of those represents a guess closer than 12 minutes. But we she can hope.

How is it precisely determined when the ice goes out? As you might imagine for an Alaskan contest, it’s kinda kludge:

In 1947, reporter Georg Myers described it this way:

“Here is how the Rube Goldberg-like apparatus works. When the ice goes out, the tripod begins to move downstream. It pulls on the rope and raises the bucket of rocks. When it has moved 100 feet downstream, the official distance, then the pin is pulled out of the gadget holding up the meat cleaver; the cleaver drops, cutting the rope holding the rocks, tripping the clock and recording the time.”

So we press on with the few pennies we have, the sky is clear and the days are once again long, hopeful we’ll win the jackpot next year. In the meantime, would you look at this, my breakfast has arrived, lovingly prepared and titled, Springtime On A Plate (a seasoned, poached egg, grilled asparagus, oven-crisped prosciutto and a toasted English muffin).

I would like to live in a community where Wisdom of the Elders is valued by up-and-comers. What more flattering, and satisfying, experience might an Elder imagine than being asked: Share with me what you’ve learned the past three decades.

Rather than valuing Elder Wisdom, it seems to me there are too many instances today where it is disregarded entirely, even sneered at, as if it were an affliction and not a virtue. I was of that attitude many years ago. Actually, it wasn’t so much I sneered at Elder Wisdom as I had become contemptuous of Authority. I was deeply resentful of individuals who thought they deserved respect simply because of their Office.

Indeed, if asked, this would be a bit of Wisdom I’d pass on to posterity, Withhold respect for any person until they’ve earned it.

If you ask me the worst disrespect for Elder Wisdom is the kind packaged with condescension. Nothing worse than some Boy full up on his own self-appraisal telling you, You got It wrong Old Man. Oh, is that so? Well, here, have a slice of Humble Pie, Boy: I was writing code for an A/D controller on a DEC PDP-11 when you were still messing your drawers.

You see, once upon a time there was an old fish. Each and every summer the old fish would join the other fish at the mouth of the river, and when the tide swung hard he’d start upstream along with them, but only so far as the rush of water would propel him. When the tail force of the tide equaled the head force of the river, the old fish sought refuge inside an eddy of a cut bank, while the others fought their way upstream. There he’d wait for the next pulse of fish to come by on the next tide. When they did, he’d dart from the cut bank and pull in behind them, swimming in their draft until he could no longer hold their pace. Then he would stop and hold up in another pool of lazy water to regain his strength. On and on this went for weeks, until, eventually, the river lost its force, began to meander and become shallower. Here, after commingling their seed among the stones of the river bed, the other fish began to transmogrify into frightful forms, both in color and shape.

What could the old fish do but swim among the carnage. He tried to caution the new fish arriving each day but to no avail. They ignored his warnings, disregarded his concerns, pushed passed him like zombie fish hastening their doom. Eventually, new fish stopped arriving, and like all the other years the old fish gave up and swam slowly downstream, back to the ocean.

One year, when the old fish had made it back to the ocean, he came upon a young fish who was late to move up the river. Surely, the old fish thought, he could persuade a single fish to avoid the fate that awaited him, if only he would listen to the wisdom of the old fish. Instead, the young fish became belligerent and challenged the old fish to a fight, which the old fish lost. His remains washed up on the beach. To this day there has never been another old fish like him.

 

If it sucks we keep it. If it doesn’t suck we take it back.

Evidently the Bissell Multi-Cyclone with Hepa Filter Boost (!) we’ve made do with the past six years is no longer capable of upsucking so much as a single pubic hair.

We have central vacuuming in our house, at least the house was plumbed for such,  but Happy Wife has never been keen on fully implementing it.

“Let’s donate the Bissell to the less fortunate,” I humbly offered.

“No!” I was sternly reproved. As if I were a rich man knocking at Heaven’s door.

Value Village, I was told in no uncertain terms, strictly forbids vacuum cleaner donations. “Why, what if the innards of the cleaner are crawling with bed bugs, hmm?”

I admit I hadn’t considered such a thing. It’s a good thing there are people in this world who do.

Into the garbage it goes, I guess. Goodness knows we don’t want to be a propagators of Bed Buggage.

We went whale watching last weekend with Kenai Fjords Tours.

At about 20 seconds you’ll hear me utter a faux concern as we approach the spires, that the Captain (~50 secs) is not at the helm.

Everywhere we went we watched and watched and watched for whales. Nada. And then, shortly after the captain fearlessly guided the boat between the spires, we spotted a gray whale. It lazily surfaced and showed us a fluke, and then just as quickly disappeared again into the leviathan darkness. And we waited. And waited. And waited some more for it to resurface. The captain mentioned,”like watching paint dry.”

Minutes later someone shouted, “There it is!” Why yes, sure enough, even I could see the remnant disturbance on the water, a thousand or more feet away. By the time iPhones were deployed it was once again gone.

Paint Dried. We moved on.

Near Chival Island we paused to watch another gray. Equally elusive. Totally undaunted by our presence.

Again we moved on. This time to deeper water chasing the hope heard over the radio by another boat that they had spotted Orcas!

Whatya know.

Okay, fine, you’re right, I agree — but what a day on the water we had! We also saw harbor seals aplenty, Dahl porpoises (mini Orcas), a lazy otter, and sea lions (aka Orca food).

Friends have begun showing up in email lately, “We’re coming to Alaska this summer, you gonna be around?!”

Yes, I assure them, we will be around, we are here for you. We are always here for you.

May I even suggest that losing a dog is like losing a limb.

No, some might say, that would devalue the experience of those who have actually lost a limb.

And I would say that might devalue our experience of actually losing a dog.

What both victims of loss have in common, I’m sure, is the wish that the loss could be undone.

…

Just wanted to reassure you we are still here. Futilely wishing we could unring a bell.

I suppose that for so many people for whom a dog is merely a furry little head to pat once or twice a day, but otherwise to be left in the backyard on a leash for hours on end, or inside some cage much of the day, freed only briefly when it suits its Master’s needs, then excessive emoting over the loss of a dog must seem…I don’t know, pathological.

If you think that then fine, please recommend us a treatment. I would try it. Because what we’re feeling is no good.

I don’t mean to devalue other peoples’ experiences with their dogs or their personal feelings of loss.

I only know how much time and devotion we — myself, yes, but especially Happy Wife via Harry — invested in our dogs. Was it extraordinary? Yes, I’m pretty sure it was.

We’re not seeking anyone’s praise or merit badge — being our dogs companions the past 12+ years was its own reward.

I only mention it to emphasize just how much of our time we’ve spent in the company of dogs. Hell, I once estimated conservatively that I walked/biked over 6000 miles with Rufus. A great deal of that was with Rufus and Lucy, and then more with just Lucy after Rufus died, and then a little more with just Harry.

In all that time they become part of you. Kind of like a leg, or an arm, an inseparable part of who you are.

We lost Harry tonight. In the backseat of the car on the way to pet emergency. In the arms of our friend who’s been staying with us this week.

Harry would have been 13 tomorrow.

We don’t understand why he died suddenly. We’d been treating him for lymphoma but then had to postpone his treatment earlier this week because his platelet count was too low. A concern, yes, but all other indications were he was doing well. Even as recently as today on his walk with Happy Wife, and later his appetite and spirit, he seemed fine. And then suddenly around 7 pm he came inside the house appearing very bloated, nothing too unusual for him lately, but this time exhibiting a kind of halting, gasping breath, and he was foaming at the mouth. Something was clearly different, not right. Happy Wife quickly took him outside for a short walk, which has helped him degas in the past. Only this time it didn’t help. I called for calm in the garage, thinking — hoping really — he’d recover. But it was the wrong call. We all piled in the car.

We were only blocks from the hospital when I turned to look at our friend who was in the backseat with Harry. The shake of the head. The consoling hand on my shoulder. Happy Wife flooded in tears.

…

How to describe Harry. Probably the sweetest, gentlest, funniest Airedale we’ve ever had the good fortune to companion ourselves with. I think that about captures it; that was Harry. We will miss him very much.

Happy 13th Birthday and Godspeed you crazy Jughead, Godspeed.